Remember all the concern about colony collapse disorder? That’s a real problem that causes entire colonies of honeybees to simply abandon their hives. And that’s a real problem because the bees pollinate about 1/3 of the food we eat. Without them, our food supply would be in serious jeopardy. From an excellent story published today by Reason:

Time called it a “bee-pocalypse”; Quartz went with “beemageddon.” By 2013, National Public Radio was declaring “a crisis point for crops” and a Time cover was foretelling “a world without bees.” A share of the blame has gone to everything from genetically modified crops, pesticides, and global warming to cellphones and high-voltage electric transmission lines. The Obama administration created a task force to develop a “national strategy” to promote honeybees and other pollinators, calling for $82 million in federal funding to address pollinator health and enhance 7 million acres of land. This year both Cheerios and Patagonia have rolled out save-the-bees campaigns; the latter is circulating a petition calling on the feds to “protect honeybee populations” by imposing stricter regulations on pesticide use.

Colony collapse really is a real problem, but as Reason points out, America’s hard-working beekeepers have held the bee-pocalypse at bay. In fact, the number of honeybee colonies is up:

To see how effective beekeepers’ strategies have been in the face of colony collapse, examine the data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual beekeeper surveys. In 2016, there were 2.78 million honeybee colonies in the United States—16 percent more than when the disorder hit in 2006. In fact, there are more honeybee colonies in the country today than in nearly 25 years. Honey production also shows no pattern of decline. Last year, U.S. beekeepers churned out 161 million pounds of honey, slightly more than when colony collapse began.

And the market has been able to overcome this problem without even increasing prices in a significant way:

Using annual data collected from advertisements in the American Bee Journal, a beekeeping magazine, the researchers find no measurable increase in the prices of these bees after controlling for pre-existing trends. One reason is that supply is extremely elastic: Commercial queen breeders are able to rear large numbers of queen bees quickly, often in less than a month, to meet increased demand.

This is all pretty remarkable, but the invisible hand of the market has remained mostly invisible. This isn’t the kind of story that environmental journalists seem eager to tell. But even as the dubious save-the-bees campaigns continue, American beekeepers have already found a way to avert disaster.

]]>3964211This is how progressives undermine capitalism in the name of “character”http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/13/progressives-undermine-capitalism-name-character/
Sat, 13 May 2017 21:31:16 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3955594Keep the stores empty to prevent "gentrification"

Here’s an odd little story for you this weekend which I ran across in the local press out of San Francisco. It really wouldn’t merit much national attention were it not such a sterling example of enshrined, liberal tribal beliefs being carried over in the real world to the point of self-ridicule. This story in the SF Weekly deals with a commercial property in the Haight-Ashbury district which became a local bone of contention after some redevelopment work. The address on Steiner St. was, for many years, the home of a locally owned coffee shop called “Bean There.” (Très adorable, n’est-ce pas?) It was popular with the locals, but following some earthquake mitigation work by the owner of the property, the lease to the coffee shop owner was not renewed. There’s some debate over why that took place, but that’s not really the story here.

What came next was an ongoing fight to see what business would replace Been There. A profitable looking bid came in for a different coffee shop operated by Blue Bottle Coffee. As the linked article explains, having another coffee shop there wasn’t going to be acceptable if it wasn’t the right kind of coffee shop, if you know what I mean. Local community activists leapt into action without delay.

But behind the scenes, a battle against corporate coffee moguls was being waged…

The process hands a fair amount of power to nearby residents, who are allowed to petition to the Planning Commission for or against a formula retail business moving in.

With this bit of power, Lower Haight got fired up. Neighbors United, a group formed by former District 5 supervisor candidate Dean Preston and his deputy campaign manager Jen Snyder, worked closely with the Lower Haight Merchants and Neighbors Association (LoHMNA) and local resident Hal Fischer to flyer the neighborhood and alert residents about the plan. On Thursday people flooded the Planning Commission meeting, voicing an overwhelming distaste for the chain coffee shop’s attempt to move into Bean There’s old spot.

And in the end, they won. The Planning Commission voted 2-4 in favor of the opposition. A final motion to officially block Blue Bottle will be held at a future meeting.

The locals apparently have the power to petition the planning commission and stop any development which doesn’t fit in with the “flavor” (oh… pardon me. I’m sure that’s probably flavour) of the Lower Haight neighborhood. They are also on the lookout to prevent “gentrification” and they certainly don’t want one of those big, international chain operations moving in and diluting the local culture. So they shut down Blue Bottle’s bid. The people rejoiced over this great victory.

“This is a huge victory for preserving the character of our neighborhood,” said Fischer, who led a petition drive that gathered more than 1,300 signatures.

Congratulations, community organizers! You kept out that big, nasty, soulless international chain store. Except for one thing. Blue Bottle is a boutique coffee outfit which was formed pretty much next door in Oakland. Their mission statement tells you all about their horrible corporate philosophy. It was started by, “a slightly disaffected freelance musician and coffee lunatic.” He created the brand specifically to rebel against major chains like Starbucks and bring people freshly ground coffee made from (and this is the important bit) “responsibly sourced beans.”

And how big is this massive international chain which the locals were too exclusive to have in their neighborhood? They have a total of 34 stores. But that’s more than the eleven which the local ordinance allows before you are considered a major international player, however. So Blue Bottle’s bid was shut down. And what did this “victory” deliver for the sensitive, socially woke residents instead? The property sits empty, as it has for over a year with the exception of a brief, failed attempt to open up a hair salon there. So the neighborhood used to have a coffee shop where people could gather for a cup of joe and mingle. Now they have an empty eyesore which is generating zero profit or tax revenue.

Well played, folks. You’ve certainly struck a blow for hipster culture everywhere. You’ve also managed to squeeze out even more of the remaining incentive to attempt to engage in capitalism in California. But what’s the difference if you drove down the property values and stopped someone from providing some jobs to local folks and possibly making a profit? You managed to ward off the scourge of “gentrification.” Thank God you were there to save the union from falling into disrepair.

]]>3955594YouGov poll: Republicans far more likely than Democrats to agree that America has been losing from the free markethttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/06/yougov-poll-republicans-far-more-likely-to-agree-than-democrats-that-america-has-been-losing-from-the-free-market/
Wed, 07 Dec 2016 03:31:13 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3934810Legacies.

A follow-up to Ed’s post earlier on the Morning Consult poll confirming that the “free-market party” isn’t really a free-market party and probably hasn’t been for a long time.

Here’s the partisan breakdown when Americans are asked whether they agree with Mike Pence’s instantly famous protectionist profession of faith on the day the Carrier deal was announced that “the free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing.”

Trump was once asked during the Republican primaries whether he was conservative enough for the GOP’s base and he answered by reminding the interviewer that it’s called the “Republican Party,” not the “Conservative Party.” Look again at these numbers, though, and you’ll see virtually no difference between Republicans and self-identified conservatives. “Conservatives” are now more skeptical of the free market — much more — than “liberals” are.

The pattern recurs when you ask Americans if they support tariffs or other taxes on U.S. companies that outsource jobs:

Click the link and you’ll see that literally every demographic tested favored the idea (interestingly, young adults were the most tepid in their support) but Republicans and conservatives, the supposed pro-business/anti-tax wing of the political spectrum, favored it most strongly. What’s going on here?

Partisanship, to a large degree. My pal Karl pointed out on Twitter that the share of Democrats who view free trade mainly as an opportunity rather than a threat was below 50 percent for most of the Bush years, once dropping as low as 36 percent, before beginning a steady climb once Obama took office. It reached 66 percent in 2013 and has remained above 60 for most of the years since. Why? Because their guy, Barack Obama, has been in charge of trade and they trust him. He’s a “globalist,” to borrow a word from the nationalists, so they’re globalists too, by and large. And of course it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who negotiated NAFTA and made outsourcing semi-respectable as a matter of Democratic economic policy.

But it’s not all partisanship. Follow that last link and look closely at Gallup’s graph and you’ll see that the share of Republicans who view free trade mainly as an opportunity hasn’t been above 57 percent in the past 15 years. The number began to decline during the Bush years, in fact, not the Obama years, and was below 50 percent by 2008. The highest level it’s reached since then is a mere 52 percent. For most of the past five years, there’s been a double-digit gap between Democrats who see free trade mostly as an opportunity and Republicans who do. You can see greater misgivings on the right about free trade in other old polls too. Last year, right around the time Trump got into the race, YouGov asked Americans if free-trade agreements have been mostly good or bad for the U.S. Democrats split +39 for “good,” Republicans split … +4. A few months before that, before Trump had become a candidate, YouGov asked Republicans and Democrats whether free-trade agreements have a negative impact on wages, jobs, consumer protections, and businesses. In every case, more Republicans perceived a negative impact than Democrats. In the specific case of jobs, the gap between Republicans who saw a negative impact and Democrats who did was 15 points.

What you’re seeing in today’s new YouGov numbers, I think, is partly a show of partisan loyalty to the new Trumpian protectionist creed but also a genuine drift in opinion on the right over the past 10 years or more. As the party’s working-class base struggled economically, support for free trade began to struggle too — and yet the party’s leadership maintained its free-trade orthodoxy, creating a vacuum in advocacy for protectionism. One guy outside the party sensed that and filled that vacuum, and the rest is history. As the conservative kids on Twitter might say, sifting through these poll numbers, “that’s how you got Trump.” The ominous number, though, is the first one above, which shows strong Republican skepticism not just towards free trade but towards free markets. We may be heading for a bizarre era in which Democrats, for mostly tribal partisan reasons, end up as the biggest brake in Washington on Trump’s meddling with markets. Although, more likely, Dems will end up nominating Elizabeth Warren in 2020 and she and Trump will compete to outbid each other on who can muscle businesses more aggressively, especially in the Rust Belt. That’ll be a welcome corrective to the political status quo in privileging blue-collar concerns over white-collar ones. Whether the new policy status quo ends up being better is a different question.

One note in closing. Although YouGov sees plenty of support for protectionism, especially on the right, reaction to the Carrier deal is surprisingly equivocal. When asked if they approve of how Trump negotiated it, 37 percent of Americans said yes versus 30 percent who said no. A small plurality of 30 percent agreed that it was “crony capitalism.” And a near-majority of 45 percent thought the precedent would encourage other companies to try to “shake down” state and local governments for tax breaks by threatening outsourcing versus just 17 percent who disagreed. The public likes seeing jobs stay put but they’re not blind to the consequences here.

Consider this story to juicy to pass up — and ripe for a little grilling. Who knows best about the nature of demand in a competitive fast-food market on the West Coast? Why, a DC-based non-profit that opposes the use of meat, of course. When the Good Food Institute started a petition drive to demand a vegetarian option at In-N-Out, the Huffington Post jumped on the bandwagon by claiming that America’s got a fevah and the only prescription is less cowbell:

We’re always pumped when veggie burgers pop up on restaurant menus. And according to one campaign, America really wants veggie burgers at In-N-Out.

“If you want a meat-free meal at In-N-Out, you’re going to be stuck eating multiple orders of French fries or a cheese-slathered bun,” reads the petition from the Good Food Institute. “In-N-Out has been letting its fans down by failing to serve anything that would satisfy a burger-loving customer who wants a healthy, humane, and sustainable option.”

This caught my eye because, as a native Southern California, I know a thing or two about In-N-Out. First, the nearest outlet’s in Texas, at least 1500 miles away from DC, and most of them are on the West Coast or Interior West. Why a DC-based vegetarian activist group would bother with a regional player is mystifying, especially since it’s clear that they don’t have the first clue as to what makes In-N-Out or its customers tick.

In-N-Out has been around almost 70 years, a family business currently owned by the only grandchild of the founders, Harry and Esther Snyder. It has thrived for a few reasons, but one of those has been simplicity. While other burger joints added chicken and fish sandwiches, built all sorts of burger options, and experimented with side dishes, In-N-Out stuck to the basics: hamburger, cheeseburger, and the Double-Double, along with fries, soft drinks, and shakes. It doesn’t innovate — it excels at its core function. For that reason, long lines appear regularly at the drive-thru locations.

Now, if those customers suddenly stopped showing up because there were no vegetarian options, In-N-Out would probably add them, the way other burger joints have. So far, though, there’s no let-up in their business. And even if they did add a veggie patty to the options, HuffPo’s honest enough to note that it wouldn’t actually make much difference:

Some vegan eaters argue In-N-Out shouldn’t be supported because it serves meat, while some meat-lovers point out there are plenty of specialty restaurants besides In-N-Out where both vegans and vegetarians can get their burger fix. (As if there could be too many!)

So it’s not as though In-N-Out is missing out on an untapped market. The same people who supposedly demand a vegetarian “option” begrudge the meat-eating “option” enough to take a pass. Besides, getting 24,000 signatures on this petition is a joke. They have 300 locations serving up thousands of burgers daily to people who like their product. They’re not going to get too concerned about 24,000 people signing up for a political diktat run by a group that’s half a continent away from its nearest grill.

This is the very definition of elitism, and its almost-always-present ignorance and arrogance. America doesn’t want a veggie burger at In-N-Out. A few busybodies want to shame In-N-Out (and its customers) for its success, and couldn’t care less whether they ever eat there or not.

Earlier, I mentioned the simplicity of the menu, but there is a small caveat to that. Longtime customers know that In-N-Out has a few off-menu options. The front-page image is the 4×4, a twist on the Double-Double that has four meat patties and four slices of cheese, taken right before I devoured it. That should be enough to make GFI run for the nearest Good Earth Restaurant — which, by the way, is excellent as well. One person can easily enjoy both experiences. That’s what is so great about free markets and consumer choice.

This past weekend was Easter, the most important religious observance for Christians, and as one myself it got me to thinking about the current state of religious liberty in the United States and the incredible damage done to liberty by religious (predominantly evangelical Christian) and social conservatives.

“But, wait!” you cry, “Religious liberty is under attack and social conservatives are fighting to protect it!” True, as far as it goes, which is only as far as trying to grasp on to what’s left of what should have been their primary focus decades ago: protecting everyone’s liberty instead of trying to use political and police power to enforce a particular personal and religious moral code.

A recent effort of social conservatives to try and straw grasp is Georgia House Bill 757, which Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (a Republican) has announced he will veto after pressure exerted by interests like the NFL and the entertainment industry who have threatened to pull their significant investments in Georgia over legalized “discrimination”. Bills like 757 should be no brainers, and should be loved by anyone who respects individual liberty, but the problem is we’ve let them be cast in terms of hate, thanks to social conservatives’ denial of individual liberties over decades.

I think there’s an easy way to turn the arguments against religious freedom protection bills on their heads and get the people who are opposing them to support them: these aren’t religious liberty protection bills, they are actually LGBT, et al. protection bills!

Wait, what?!

You see, there is one key question that needs to be put to those who think “equality” can be achieved by forcing a baker to bake a cake, a photographer to take pictures, or whatever other example you care to concoct against their personal religious beliefs that is never asked. It’s this:

Why would you want to purchase goods or services from someone who doesn’t value you as a customer?

We live in a distributed mass media society. Distributed mass media means that dissatisfied customers can express their dissatisfaction to family, friends, and the entire world connected by the Internet at will. Anyone, anywhere can either view or post near-instantaneous feedback on goods or services they have either purchased or are planning to buy. New economy services like eBay, Uber, Lyft, and AirBnB put great weight on reviews of both providers and customers. You can find user reviews of just about everything, and use your own brain to figure out whether you want to give a particular business or vendor your money.

Take it to its logical conclusion: I read from reviews that a particular business doesn’t like doing business with <fill in whatever protected class you want>. If <aforementioned protected class> is a concern of mine, or I’m a member thereof, and the personal cost to me and my convictions is too great to do business with them anyway, I’ll then take my business elsewhere.

Why would I want to buy from someone who hates me or a concern of mine, when they’re being forced to provide goods or services for no other reason than the current political culture’s wielding of police powers? How could I have faith that I’m getting the highest quality good or service from them?

A business that identifies itself as not wanting to cater to same-sex couples for goods and services is a benefit to same-sex couples. They can then take their business to someone who embraces selling to same-sex couples, rather than unwittingly supporting someone opposed to their lifestyle.

And guess what? If enough people don’t like the fact that a particular business doesn’t cater to same-sex couples, that business won’t be in business very long. That’s how free markets are supposed to work.

Georgia’s response to Disney, et al. should have been, “This bill makes it easier for you to do business in our state because you will now be able to identify the people you don’t want to do business with because of their beliefs!”

Getting people’s prejudices out into the open allows for real or perceived wrongs to be handled economically by free market dynamics and gets the contents of people’s hearts and minds out of the purview of government, where they don’t belong in the first place.

Imagine: a simultaneous victory for both “social justice warriors” and people who want to assert their religious freedom. Gosh, that’s actually government being neutral between competing societal concerns that it shouldn’t be involved with in the first place.

Do you remember that millennial CEO from Seattle who raised the salaries of all of his employees to at least $70K to combat income inequality? That was a really inspirational story for many in the SJW movement and made Dan Price a sort of sainted figure among liberals as he paved the way toward a more fair and equal future. Unfortunately, as many conservative, free market analysts predicted at the time, such generosity can come at a cost. And now the young entrepreneur seems to be hitting the reality wall. (Fox News)

The Seattle CEO who reaped a publicity bonanza when he boosted the salaries of his employees to a minimum of $70,000 a year says he has fallen on hard times.

Dan Price, 31, tells the New York Times that things have gotten so bad he’s been forced to rent out his house.

Only three months ago Price was generating headlines—and accusations of being a socialist — when he announced the new salary minimum for all 120 employees at his Gravity Payments credit card processing firm. Price said he was doing it, and slashing his $1 million pay package to pay for it, to address the wealth gap.

“I’m working as hard as I ever worked to make it work,” he told the Times in a video that shows him sitting on a plastic bucket in the garage of his house. “I’m renting out my house right now to try and make ends meet myself.”

The fact that Mr. Price himself is cutting corners in his personal life really has nothing to do with this story. It was his own choice to slash his salary and he is the only one responsible for his home budget. So be it. But he describes a number of other woes which were not only predictable, but probably unavoidable. First of all, some of his higher performing workers have quit. Why? Because people who were “just clocking in and out” with the “least skills” (as one former employee put it) got huge raises while the top talent got little or nothing. This is similar to a theme we’ve discussed here before, such as the backlash we can expect from people who have skilled labor jobs paying 15 or 16 dollars an hour when they suddenly see the guy running the fry machine getting the same thing.

Long time customers also bailed out on Gravity either because of disagreements with his politicized business policies or fears that he was raising his rates to cover his generous employee compensation package. The other person who is up in arms is the CEO’s own brother who is currently taking him to court. The sibling is a 30% partner in the firm and is watching the value of his investment (and his own income) melting away before his eyes. What is an investor supposed to do when the CEO suddenly appears to lose their mind and begins giving away all the company profits and crashing their revenue forecasts?

I’m sure Mr. Price is a very nice man and he clearly cares about people in general. But his move to push his generous nature into his business model is returning precisely the sort of results which the free market predicts.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/02/ceo-who-raised-workers-minimum-pay-to-70k-hits-predictable-problems/feed/5593872046Is Venezuela thinking about lifting its longstanding gasoline subsidy? Does it have a choice?http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/24/is-venezuela-thinking-about-lifting-its-longstanding-gasoline-subsidy-does-it-have-a-choice/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/24/is-venezuela-thinking-about-lifting-its-longstanding-gasoline-subsidy-does-it-have-a-choice/#commentsTue, 24 Jun 2014 22:01:51 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=313421What's a socialist to do?

They might be hard-pressed to find bottled water, flour, sugar, or even toilet paper in any of their local shops right now, but the availability of one basic necessity of which Venezuelans feel they are rightfully assured is the extremely cheap gasoline that the government has subsidized for a going rate of about 5 U.S. cents a gallon (which amounts to even less at the “unofficial” rate) for almost two decades. Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, and the very idea of getting rid of or cutting back on the subsidy for domestic gasoline sales is pretty much the third rail of Venezuelan politics — its continuation is basically one of the promised pillars of the country’s socialized society. The subsidy costs the government at least $12 billion a year, however, and with the economy in the throes of so much centrally-planned-yet-not-planned turmoil, Nicolas Maduro might be running out of options. As the Financial Times notes:

…[A]nalysts say that removing a gasoline subsidy estimated to cost $12bn a year will be the litmus test of how far Mr Maduro is prepared to go in his attempt to bring a semblance of economic rationality back to the country.

“No government dares to do it, but we are at an inflection point: either they do it, or we go bankrupt. There is no other option,” says Nelson Hernández, a former senior executive with PDVSA, the state-run oil company.

Venezuelan gasoline prices have been frozen since 1996, three years before Mr Maduro’s predecessor, the charismatic Hugo Chávez, came to power and launched Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution”. Since then, international oil prices have risen sevenfold, while accumulated Venezuelan inflation has topped 4,435 per cent, says a December report by Barclays.

… Ending the gasoline subsidy, for example, would help close a fiscal deficit estimated at some 13 per cent of gross domestic product that is currently financed by printing money, which only fuels further inflation. …

Another businessman close to the government agrees. “It was inconceivable under Chávez to raise the price of gasoline, but it is likely to happen soon,” he says. “The difficulty is how to manage this without widespread social unrest while holding on to power when you have a slim majority.”

One of the biggest problems with downsizing on the gasoline subsidy, of course, is not merely the collective rage blackout that would likely consume all of Venezuela, but the hugely lucrative black-market gas trade that the subsidy fuels; an estimated 140,000 barrels a day, the FT reports, are smuggled into neighboring Colombia and sold way above domestic prices. Such a large operation would be almost impossible unless some government insiders and senior military officers were involved — i.e., people that Maduro needs to not piss off in order to keep the military on his side.

It’s just so unfortunate how these planned socialist utopias so often devolve into self-cannibalizing kleptocracies, you know?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/24/is-venezuela-thinking-about-lifting-its-longstanding-gasoline-subsidy-does-it-have-a-choice/feed/24313421At least the EPA did one thing right in the new emissions regulations: Don’t nix the nukeshttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/03/at-least-the-epa-got-one-thing-right-in-the-new-emissions-regulations-dont-nix-the-nukes/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/03/at-least-the-epa-got-one-thing-right-in-the-new-emissions-regulations-dont-nix-the-nukes/#commentsTue, 03 Jun 2014 22:41:12 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=310380That's something, I suppose.

While the emissions regulations mostly meant to not-so-gently steer the country’s power plants away from coal are likely to be hugely, regressively costly in terms of job- and wealth-creation, the eco-radical set would argue that those costs are ones to which we should readily resign ourselves in order to bring us one step closer to climate-change mitigation. The most glaring problem with that reasoning, however, is that these regulations are not going to be particularly effective at achieving significant carbon-emissions reduction.

The United States’ electricity generation only accounts for about a third of its carbon emissions, and the U.S. is no longer the lone major polluter on the planet — and it is going to become even less so as other countries’ economies develop and the world’s population continues to grow in both wealth and numbers. As Jonathan Adler points out in an excellent post at the Volokh Conspiracy/WaPo (that you should definitely go read in full if you’re into environmental issues), these regulations are really only serving to highlight the incredibly limited effectiveness we can ever ever hope to have via regulation and top-down central economic planning. What we really need are more advanced, diversified, cost-effective, and clean technologies that can keep providing heightening energy efficiency for fewer monetary and environmental costs. …In a nutshell, the type of major innovations that Big Governments is exceptionally poor at creating when they are leading both the science community and investment dollars around by the nose while simultaneously squashing the competitive influences of the free market via politically-directed subsidies and regulations.

Here, for instance, is a very recent example of this phenomenon: The EPA expects that the coal plants it is effectively shutting down with these regulations will be replaced by cleaner-burning natural gas, but the rise of natural gas was largely brought about by free-enterprise-driven innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling on state and private lands. (And, sidebar: I would merely like to take this opportunity to once again condemn the eco-radical movement for what must be either its stupidity, its obstinacy, or else its lack of sincerity concerning its true goals in trying to rid the world of fracking. The degree of counterproductivity there is mind-numbing.)

In that vein, then, I suppose we can at least be glad that the EPA didn’t decide to follow the ideological and ill-advised path laid down by Germany’s grandiose climate-change ambitions. In what was supposed to be their super-green and pioneering Energiewende transformation, Germany decided to get rid of their nuclear power plants in favor of subsidizing expensive solar and wind schemes — with the end result being a ridiculously pricey and horribly intermittent energy grid that they then had to back up by bringing more coal plants online and perpetuating net emissions that were higher than they were when they started out.

The nuclear power industry is in the throes of its own set of economic problems when it comes to competing with coal and natural gas plants (and it is on the receiving end of its own set of government subsidies), but it produces virtually zero emissions without taking up too much land. What’s more, it produces reliable, around-the-clock energy output that puts it light years ahead of wind and solar energy, and fortunately, the EPA isn’t trying to punish it with the new emissions regulations like some of the other hysterical policymakers of the world have been doing lately. Instead, the agency’s rule looks to “discourage premature retirement” and “encourage deployment of nuclear unit designs that reflect advances over earlier designs”:

The Obama administration today threw a potential — and limited — lifeline to the country’s ailing nuclear industry, highlighting the ability of existing reactors to help states curb emissions.

U.S. EPA unveiled a proposal for curbing emissions from existing power plants that pointed to the United States’ fleet of about 100 reactors as playing a critical role — alongside ramping up efficiency and shifting to natural gas and other low-carbon alternatives — in cutting the utility sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2030.

At issue is EPA’s finding in the proposal that preventing the closure of “at-risk” existing reactors could avoid up to 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during the initial compliance phase of 10 years.

“Policies that encourage development of renewable energy capacity and discourage premature retirement of nuclear capacity could be useful elements of CO2 reduction strategies and are consistent with current industry behavior,” the agency said. “Costs of CO2 reductions achievable through these policies have been estimated in a range from $10 to $40 per metric ton.”

As ever, I find little use for subsidy schemes of any sort beyond choking off innovation and investment elsewhere — and I think the government could be spending our money much more effectively with things like technology inducement prizes, as Adler notes — but if the Obama EPA insists on regulating the heck out of our energy sector, they could be doing it even more illogically by trying to specifically stamp out nuclear, as a handful of other crazed countries have done. That’s all I’m saying.

As Ed already noted during the advent of Thomas Piketty’s not-so-revolutionary “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” there are some serious fundamental flaws in the Piketty narrative in which modern economic growth has somehow ravaged the lower and middle classes while the upper echelons of society enjoyed the lion’s share of the benefits, and we are now supposedly in the midst of an income-inequality crisis. Piketty got very obviously picky and choosey with a whole lot of the data points he used to construct his arguments, and the Financial Times just did their own investigation into the exact math he employed. The results?

But, according to a Financial Times investigation, the rock-star French economist appears to have got his sums wrong.

The data underpinning Professor Piketty’s 577-page tome, which has dominated best-seller lists in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings. The FT found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those which last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. …

Prof Piketty, 43, provides detailed sourcing for his estimates of wealth inequality in Europe and the US over the past 200 years. In his spreadsheets, however, there are transcription errors from the original sources and incorrect formulas. It also appears that some of the data are cherry-picked or constructed without an original source.

For example, once the FT cleaned up and simplified the data, the European numbers do not show any tendency towards rising wealth inequality after 1970.

Well, who woulda’ thunk it? The Environmental Protection Agency finally decided to acknowledge the incompatibility of the Renewable Fuel Standard with both America’s declining gasoline consumption and the environmental degradation caused by the production of corn ethanol, thereby obliterating the entirely government-imposed “market” for biofuels — and what do you suppose happens? Via The Hill:

Almost eight in 10 biodiesel producers in the United States have cut back production this year due to uncertainty over federal policies that encourage making the fuels, the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) said.

The report released Wednesday was based on a survey the NBB conducted. In addition to the finding that 78 percent of producers reduced output, 57 percent of companies have idle or shut down plants and 66 percent have reduced their workforces or are considering it.

Almost all of the surveyed companies attribute the industry’s decline to two recent policy developments: the expiration at the end of last year of the tax credit to produce biodiesel and a proposal last year by the Environmental Protection Agency not to increase the biodiesel mandate in the Renewable Fuel Standard.

“Inconsistency in Washington is wreaking havoc on the U.S. biodiesel industry,” Anne Steckel, NBB’s vice president of federal affairs, said in a statement.

“Inconsistency in Washington is wreaking havoc on the U.S. biodiesel industry”? …Yeah, how about we go a little more big-picture and try, “The U.S. biodiesel industry’s utter dependence on handouts from Washington is wreaking havoc on the U.S. biodiesel industry,” perhaps? This major slowdown in production is precisely why, when the EPA announced late last year that they would be reevaluating the annually-increasing volumetric requirements mandated by the Renewable Fuel Standard for 2014 (a decision on which we’re still waiting, by the way), the biofuels industry flipped out — and their respective lawmakers have been engaged in a relentless pander-fest ever since, most recently at a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday including Democrat Sens. Heitkamp, Durbin, Klobuchar, Franken, Donnelly, and Cantwell:

“We want to make sure that biofuels are included in the future when it comes to America’s energy,” Durbin said. “When there’s uncertainty about the future of biofuels, there’s uncertainty about these jobs.”

Klobuchar and Franken said Minnesota officials have estimated that the EPA’s biodiesel mandate would cause the state to lose 1,500 jobs.

Yes, it’s always very easy to talk about the tragic loss of the jobs that have been created via direct federal largesse, but what these senators aren’t talking about is the opportunity cost, i.e. the other jobs that would have been created in other and more useful areas of the private sector, if the federal government wasn’t depriving taxpayers of those dollars in the first place. Much like the huge dropoff in the egregiously subsidized wind industry without the surety of their finely tuned array of precious subsidies, the fact that biofuels producers are cutting back without their own mandates and subsidies firmly in place should serve as a red flag about the real and economically (not to mention environmentally) costly nature of this industry.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/15/oh-noes-80-percent-of-biofuels-producers-have-cut-back-on-production-due-to-federal-mandate-uncertainty/feed/21308241Fewer farms, richer farmers, and why agriculture subsidies are inexcusablehttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/21/fewer-farms-richer-farmers-and-why-agriculture-subsidies-are-inexcusable/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/21/fewer-farms-richer-farmers-and-why-agriculture-subsidies-are-inexcusable/#commentsFri, 21 Feb 2014 18:21:49 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=298268Once upon a time, there were all sorts of politically quaint justifications for why the federal government needed to dish ...

Once upon a time, there were all sorts of politically quaint justifications for why the federal government needed to dish out billions of dollars worth of tender, lovin’ subsidy care to the agriculture sector. Farmers need all of the direct payouts, and the tax credits, and the crop insurance, and the trade barriers that Congress so generously offers them, you see, because food is super important, and the federal government really needs to step in and ensure that we have a stable food supply. Plus, farming is a really tough and risky job, and who’s going to help all of those small, struggling family farmers that will hit hard times in down years?

All of which was and is utter baloney, of course. The federal government doesn’t feel the need to ensure that we have a stable supply of door knobs or washing machines, and yet somehow, we manage to get along just fine — and in fact, the federal government inflicts a lot of damaging free-market distortion onto the agriculture industry that subsidizes overproduction. As for those small, struggling family farmers we’re meant to visualize when we think of agriculture? Farming today is a largely corporate endeavor, and the vast majority of subsidies go to the biggest growers of mostly corn, soy, cotton, rice, and wheat. Those smaller farms growing the organic chard and strawberries the government tells us we’re supposed to be eating? Not so much.

The USDA just started releasing information from its own census report, and surprise: The trend of fewer farms and richer farmers has kept right on rolling, via Bloomberg:

The first batch of data from the Agriculture Census (PDF), a snapshot of American farming released on Thursday, shows that farmers flourished between the last survey in 2007 and 2012, a period that saw crop and livestock values hit record highs.

There were fewer farms in the latest five-year span—the number shows a 4.3 percent drop during the period, continuing a long-term trend—even as the amount of land devoted to farming declined just slightly.

While the average size of farms increased slightly, to 434 acres from 418, the census shows a continuing hollowing out of midsized farms in America. The number of very small farms and very large ones remained constant.

So take comfort in knowing that the ~$200 billion of subsidies in the 10-year farm bill we just passed is being spent — er — fruitfully?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/21/fewer-farms-richer-farmers-and-why-agriculture-subsidies-are-inexcusable/feed/27298268Surprise: According to a USDA report, the farm bill could end up costing way more than it’s supposed tohttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/13/surprise-according-to-a-usda-report-the-farm-bill-could-end-up-costing-way-more-than-its-supposed-to/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/13/surprise-according-to-a-usda-report-the-farm-bill-could-end-up-costing-way-more-than-its-supposed-to/#commentsFri, 14 Feb 2014 00:21:52 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=297350And the bottom drops out.

This farm bill is new and improved!, they said. Congress finally came together and achieved something on a bipartisan basis!, they said. This new bill replaces old agricultural payout programs with new ones that, if all goes as planned, could save some big bucks!, they said.

Too bad it took about five seconds for things to stop going as planned.

As I mentioned the other day, corn prices have been dropping (and will sink even lower if the EPA decides to move forward with their proposal to relent on the ever-increasing ethanol requirements of the Renewable Fuel Standard — fingers crossed), and Politico reports on some new economic projections released by the USDA today that, if they prove correct, have the potential to hike up the supposed price tag of the farm bill. Unexpectedly.

New economic projections released by the Agriculture Department Thursday carry a sober warning of what lower corn prices could mean for the cost of the new farm bill over the next few years.

For the 2014-2015 marketing year beginning Sept. 1, the report projects a seasonal average farm price of just $3.65 per bushel of corn–compared to $4.50 for the current year. In 2015-2016, the price drops further to $3.30 per bushel before beginning a slow but steady climb back up to $4.10-$4.20 per bushel by 2023 and 2024.

That’s a much steeper decline than many had expected and well below the corn prices assumed by the Congressional Budget Office in scoring the new farm bill.

Just a year ago, the department was forecasting about $1 more per bushel for corn in the same 2015-2017 period. If the revised projections prove accurate, it will surely impact the cost of new counter-cyclical programs signed into law last week by President Barack Obama.

Read the rest of the Politico article for more details, but the point is that the CBO (as ever) scored the farm bill off of a set of assumptions that could really end up swinging any which way, by a little or by a heck of a lot — and that Congress not only largely created a lot of this mess in the first place with the Renewable Fuel Standard, but is ready and waiting to catch agribusiness with all manner of subsidies when it subsequently falls.

Only the federal government, through their ever-august and well-meaning largesse, could accomplish such an exquisitely tangled and entrenched web of self-inflicted artificial market signals and costly taxpayer losses.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/13/surprise-according-to-a-usda-report-the-farm-bill-could-end-up-costing-way-more-than-its-supposed-to/feed/28297350Oh, great: United States falls out of the top ten for economic freedomhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/14/oh-great-united-states-falls-out-of-the-top-ten-for-economic-freedom/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/14/oh-great-united-states-falls-out-of-the-top-ten-for-economic-freedom/#commentsWed, 15 Jan 2014 01:01:50 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=293470Womp, womp.

For going on 20 years now, the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have been putting together an annual Index of Economic Freedom by evaluating countries the world over based on ten criteria along the lines of property rights, government spending, freedom from corruption, trade freedom, and the like. They released the 2014 edition of their annaul Index today, and here’s the good news: Worldwide economic freedom has reached record levels, huzzah! The various governments of 114 countries took steps in 2013 that increased their citizens’ economic freedom, and 43 countries all over the world have now reached their highest ranking in the Index’s history. Awesome, right?

But, here’s the bad news: The United States is no longer among the relative elite of these economically free nations. Oof.

Countries achieving higher levels of economic freedom consistently and measurably outperform others in economic growth, long-term prosperity and social progress. Botswana, for example, has made gains through low tax rates and political stability.

Those losing freedom, on the other hand, risk economic stagnation, high unemployment and deteriorating social conditions. For instance, heavy-handed government intervention in Brazil’s economy continues to limit mobility and fuel a sense of injustice.

It’s not hard to see why the U.S. is losing ground. Even marginal tax rates exceeding 43% cannot finance runaway government spending, which has caused the national debt to skyrocket. The Obama administration continues to shackle entire sectors of the economy with regulation, including health care, finance and energy. The intervention impedes both personal freedom and national prosperity.

Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, Ireland, Denmark, and Estonia all outrank our new 12th-place spot, with Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and North Korea bringing up the very rear […shudders].

As I mentioned earlier today, the Obama administration is currently prepping for the president’s fifth State of the Union address by touting all the sweet executive actions they’ve freshly come up with to spur along the economy should Congress fail to act on their legislative proposals. Yet again, however, the Obama administration’s ideas all seem to center around ways to spend more taxpayer money, increase top-down federal intervention, and layer the regulations on even more thickly — i.e., take our economic freedom even further down the drain — and their only regret seems to be that this spitefully obstructionist ‘Republican’ Congress of ours hasn’t permitted them to do even more of the same.

As constantly cited by economists, financiers, and businesses, some of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of the stubbornly lethargic-and/or-decelerating French economy — the second-largest in the eurozone, for now — are their range of prohibitively complex and rigid labor laws that put a major damper on business activity, investment, innovation, and hiring.

French taxi unions, however, are evidently unmoved by this economic reality. Via the Financial Times:

Hundreds of taxi drivers jammed roads around Paris and other big French cities on Monday in a protest against what they called unfair competition from private cabs, despite moves by the Socialist government to protect them.

In action that highlighted the problem facing President François Hollande as he promises to loosen business regulation, massed taxis driving at a snail’s pace snarled roads from the two main Paris airports into the city and staged similar demonstrations elsewhere to demand a clampdown on the emergence of private taxi services.

Mr Hollande, due to outline moves to ease labour costs and red tape on Tuesday, has promised a “simplification shock” for business to help boost a sluggish economic recovery and generate jobs. But the government remains prone to imposing new restraints in the face of resistance by vested interests.

One of the long-established traditional taxi industry’s chief complaints of “unfair competition,” whatever the heck that means, comes with the burgeoning success of Uber cab and several similar French companies that are giving them a run for their money by arranging rides and payment with customers through their smartphones. As I mentioned last week, the unions managed to push through a law that would force such smartphone-hailing car services to wait through a completely arbitrary fifteen-minute [dis]grace period to pick up their passengers, but Uber, et al are so far determined to fight the law — which may explain why things got violent when an Uber driver tried to shuttle a passenger through the strike zone (i.e., you know, the highway) earlier:

But the protests turned violent when taxi drivers apparently attacked the Uber van that was transporting Kat Borlongan, co-founder of consulting firm Five by Five, and Eventbrite CTO Renaud Visage.

“Attackers tried to get in the car but our brave @uber driver maneuvered us to safety, changed the tire on the freeway and got us home.

— Kat Borlongan (@KatBorlongan) January 13, 2014”

“They also tried to open the doors, but fortunately our driver had locked them,” Visage told The Verge. While their van didn’t have any visible Uber branding on it, the protesters were attacking vehicles from all types of independent operators.

Uber confirmed the incident in a statement on its website. “That taxis chose to use violence today is unacceptable, that they chose to strike is their business,” the company said. “However, Parisians also have a choice when it comes to moving around in their city, and today’s incident certainly discourages Parisians from choosing a taxi for their next ride.”

Well. This just gets more and more Orwellian by the day, doesn’t it? Via Reuters:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the military “occupation” of a chain of electronic goods stores in a crackdown on what the socialist government views as price-gouging hobbling the country’s economy.

Various managers of the five-store, 500-employee Daka chain have been arrested, and the company will now be forced to sell products at “fair prices,” Maduro said late on Friday. …

On Saturday morning, hundreds of bargain-hunters flocked to Daka shops to take advantage of the new, cheaper prices.

“We’re doing this for the good of the nation,” said Maduro, who accuses rich businessmen and right-wing political foes backed by Washington of waging an economic “war” against him.

“I’ve ordered the immediate occupation of this chain to offer its products to the people at fair prices, everything. Let nothing remain in stock … We’re going to comb the whole nation in the next few days. This robbery of the people has to stop.”

Ah, yes — because as we all know, the determination of what kinds of prices are “fair” based on the arbitrary standards and political calculations of Venezuela’s venerable and equality-minded overlords is precisely what the country needs to help put it back on the path of economic stability and curb its annual 50+ percent inflation rate. Or, something along those lines, anyway.

Maduro and his government are still blaming the disastrous economic scenario into which they have rapidly been hurtling on the nefarious machinations of private-sector hoarding and speculation, on top of a probable plot cooked up by the United States government and opposition agitators attempting to wage “economic war” against him. Outright military occupations and takeovers are nothing that his predecessor Hugo Chavez hasn’t done before in times of political trouble, but Venezuela has municipal elections next month and Maduro really needs to do something to bolster his credibility/popularity before then. Scrapping the price controls and government interventions actually crippling the Venezuelan economy are evidently out of the question, but super-awesome ideas like deciding Venezuelans are in for an early Christmas? Totally legit. Via Mac Margolis at the Daily Beast:

Last week he created a Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness, perhaps hoping that true contentment in the crumbling Bolivarian republic could be conjured with a pen stroke. And now Maduro’s latest move has been to declare an early Christmas.

As exotic as it sounds, getting the jump on Father Christmas has its logic. In a land where prices are rising at a blistering 50 percent per year, street crime is raging, and blackouts are commonplace, Venezuelans could use some holiday cheer. The fact that the season’s greetings come with an advance bonus on government paychecks only sweetens the pot.

And Maduro’s hoping it will help the government, as well. On December 8, Venezuelans will go to the polls yet again to vote in municipal elections. With the gathering economic mess, which has depleted supermarkets of household goods and sent the price of the dollar skyrocketing to six times the official rate, government approval ratings have sagged. By fattening paychecks before the polls, Maduro clearly is hoping to heal the country’s wounds and buoy the fortunes of Chavista candidates, many of whom are trailing rising challengers.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/09/real-life-venezuelas-maduro-orders-military-occupation-of-electronics-stores/feed/53286597If you think the ObamaCare exchanges and premiums were bad …http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/14/if-you-think-the-obamacare-exchanges-and-premiums-were-bad/
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/14/if-you-think-the-obamacare-exchanges-and-premiums-were-bad/#commentsMon, 14 Oct 2013 16:01:27 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=282847... wait until you see the deductibles.

… then Barack Obama’s hometown newspaper has news for you. The initial shock of the premium increases and the incompetent use of $94 million [see update] to create the world’s biggest 404 exchange are just the starting shocks of ObamaCare. Wait until people have to actually start using their new insurance, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all will be waiting:

Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner, considers himself better informed than most when it comes to the inner workings of health insurance. But even he wasn’t prepared for the pocketbook hit he’ll face next year under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

If the 33-year-old single father wants the same level of coverage next year as what he has now with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals, his monthly premium of $233 will more than double. If he wants to keep his monthly payments in check, the Carpentersville resident is looking at an annual deductible for himself and his 7-year-old daughter of $12,700, a more than threefold increase from $3,500 today.

“I believe everybody should be able to have health insurance, but at the same time, I’m being penalized. And for what?” said Weldzius, who is not offered insurance through his employer. “For someone who’s always had insurance, who’s always taken care of myself, now I have to change my plan?”

That’s right — not only have premiums doubled in the individual markets, the coverage has gotten worse in a very concrete way. The new system has now opened a wide chasm between the employer and individual markets on actual cost coverage, too:

To promote the Oct. 1 debut of the exchanges, the online marketplaces where consumers can shop and buy insurance,Obama administration and Illinois officials touted the lower-than-expected monthly premiums that would make insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. But a Tribune analysis shows that 21 of the 22 lowest-priced plansoffered on the Illinois health insurance exchange for Cook Countyhave annual deductibles of more than $4,000 for an individual and $8,000 for family coverage.

Those deductibles, which represent the out-of-pocket money consumers must spend on health care before most insurance benefits kick in, are higher than what many consumers expected or may be able to stomach, benefit experts said.

By comparison, people who buy health insurance through their employer have an average individual deductible of just more than $1,100, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bear in mind that Democrats claimed that the ObamaCare exchanges would make insurers treat individuals better in relation to group insurance plans. Instead, they’ve made the markets for individuals even worse than before, thanks to the deluge of costly mandates imposed on insurers, who must pass the cost of risk pools to the consumers.

The higher deductibles are the result of attempting to tamp down the premium hikes, but this raises a big question about the structure of the reform itself. If consumers end up with $4000 deductibles, how are these costs different than the alternate reform model of hospitalization insurance, health-savings accounts (HSAs), and emphasis on the cash/retail system for routine medical care? What we’ve ended up with is the same deductible costs — no one will use $4000 in routine medical care a year — without the cash-market reforms that would drive costs downward through price-signal clarity and competition, while incentivizing providers to get back into routine medical care by wiping out third-party payer red tape and costs.

Millions of Americans may be wrestling with computer glitches to try to sign up for Obamacare — but many people eligible just won’t bother and will pay a price for it.

Some will flout the mandate to buy coverage on ideological grounds, a health insurance version of civil disobedience.

Some will opt for the penalty because it’s cheaper than paying for insurance, even with subsidies — as long as they don’t get sick and have to pay their own medical bills.

And some are so confused about the president’s health care law that they may not even realize they have to pay a penalty — or a tax, as the Supreme Court called it — until they get slapped with the fine when they file their 2014 tax returns. And sign-up rates may be affected, too, if the technical problems on the exchange websites persist.

If you have to pay the first $4000 out of your own pocket on insurance premiums that have doubled, why bother at all?

Last spring, Department of Veterans Affairs announced that they planned to withhold the usual yearly round of bonuses for the senior officials that oversee veterans’ disability claims, pointing to both the uptick in the number of claims of the past few years as well as failures in meeting performance goals as impediments the department needs to better manage. The savings, a spokesman vaguely assured us at the time, said that the savings would be used to help reduce the running backlog and help them achieve its elimination by 2015. Just the other day, VA Secretary assured the press that the department is committed to that goal, and again defined the parameters as being able to process all claims within 125 days with 98 percent accuracy.

While veterans waited longer than ever in recent years for their wartime disability compensation, the Department of Veterans Affairs gave its workers millions of dollars in bonuses for “excellent” performances that effectively encouraged them to avoid claims that needed extra work to document veterans’ injuries, a News21 investigation has found.

In 2011, a year in which the claims backlog ballooned by 155 percent, more than two-thirds of claims processors shared $5.5 million in bonuses, according to salary data from the Office of Personnel Management.

The more complex claims were often set aside by workers so they could keep their jobs, meet performance standards or, in some cases, collect extra pay, said VA claims processors and union representatives. Those claims now make up much of the VA’s widely scrutinized disability claims backlog, defined by the agency as claims pending more than 125 days.

“At the beginning of the month . . . I’d try to work my really easy stuff so I could get my numbers up,” said Renee Cotter, a union steward for the Reno, Nev., local of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).

Now, claims workers said, they fear the VA’s aggressive new push to finish all one-year-old claims by Oct. 1 — and eliminate the entire backlog by 2015 — could continue the emphasis on quantity over quality in claims processing that has often led to mistakes.

I would love to believe that these bonuses were handed out on the basis of merit to those who really went above and beyond the call of duty and are really acting as a useful incentivizing tool for the department, but this is one of the biggest problems with our gigantic monster of a federal bureaucracy: Painfully slow to innovate, especially prone to inertia, and often hostile to competitive efficiencies found in the private sector. Maybe these employees did go above their performance standards, but there is clearly a problem with the performance standards themselves if they reward workers for prioritizing easy cases and throwing more difficult ones on the back-burner. That sounds an awful lot like a breeding ground for inefficiency, and it’s hardly going to help with getting all claims taken care of within the 125-day limit, is it?

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense spent at least $1.3 billion during the last four years trying unsuccessfully to develop a single electronic health-records system between the two departments — leaving veterans’ disability claims piling up in paper files, a News21 investigation shows. …

For a veteran in the disability claims process, these records are critical: They include DOD service and health records needed by the VA to decide veterans’ disability ratings and the compensation they will receive for their injuries.

Although Congress repeatedly has demanded an “integrated” and “interoperable” electronic health-records system, neither the DOD nor the VA is able to completely access the other’s electronic records. Meanwhile, each has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on upgrades to its information technology and on attempts to improve interoperability between their systems.

At a July congressional hearing, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said he was disappointed and frustrated. “The only thing interoperable we get are the litany of excuses flying across both departments every year as to why it has taken so long to get this done,” said Miller, the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee.

And almost a third of respondents still say they’re unfamiliar with ObamaCare, even as we approach T-minus one month for the individual exchanges. Among those familiar with the Affordable Care Act, though, a majority disapproves, according to Gallup’s latest poll:

Less than two months before the health insurance exchanges open nationwide, more Americans disapprove (49%) than approve (41%) of the Affordable Care Act. An additional 11% have no opinion. As this landmark legislation enters the next phase in its implementation process, it remains divisive. With the exception of a bounce likely caused by President Barack Obama’s re-election in November 2012, Americans have been more disapproving than approving of the healthcare law.

Additionally, more Americans are pessimistic than optimistic about the future impact of the law. Less than a quarter believe it will make their family’s healthcare situation better, while 38% say it will make it worse. When asked about the law’s impact on the healthcare situation in the U.S., 35% say it will make the situation better, while 44% say it will make it worse. Americans’ views are essentially the same as they were in June.

Familiarity in this case breeds contempt. For those mostly or fully unfamiliar with the bill, it has a 36/39 approval rating — statistically an even split, but a poor result nonetheless for the administration’s signature legislation three years after its passage. Among those who have been following ObamaCare, though, the approval rating slumps to 42/55, with only 2% undecided. It’s a flop, in other words.

ObamaCare gets the highest approval in the age demo with the least familiarity, 18-34YOs, where only 10% are “very familiar” and 36% are mostly or fully unfamiliar with the law. (That may be because a good portion of that age bracket will stay on their parents’ insurance now, and don’t have to acquire insurance for themselves, too.) Still, it’s almost an even split on approval/disapproval of the ACA in this age demo, 44/40, hardly a big boost to the bill’s standing.

Thanks to a series of high-profile setbacks this week — announcements of employers dumping spousal coverage and limiting hours — the likelihood of a big run on subsidies next year will start ObamaCare early on its unsustainable path. What will be the endgame? In my column for The Fiscal Times, I suggest that it might not be the endgame that Harry Reid and other Democrats think:

If this collapses, what’s the endgame for Obamacare? Senator Harry Reid told a Nevada PBS panel that the ACA was only the first step. “What we’ve done with Obamacare is a step in the right direction,” Reid said, “but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever.”

The ultimate goal of Obamacare was to “work our way past” health insurers altogether, Reid explained, and when asked whether that meant a national health program, Reid replied, “Yes, yes, absolutely, yes.” Senator Tom Coburn warned last year that Democrats designed the ACA to be a gateway to single-payer, government-run health care, and Reid apparently agrees.

However, Reid and his fellow Democrats may end up with a much different outcome than they desire. The primary problem with health-care costs is the third-party-payer system, especially for routine care. That system has been resistant to change because of the employer-subsidy model that arose during World War II as a way to get around wage freezes. …

The ACA will break the employer-subsidized payer model, but not in a way that makes the government-subsidy payer model work any better. The issue won’t be insurers in the exchanges, but the subsidies themselves. The subsidies are the unsustainable element in a rush away from the employer model. The only rational method to deal with the avalanche of subsidy demands is to allow for less-comprehensive insurance plans that charge lower premium rates or to tax Americans into poverty to fund them.

The most rational choice for coverage, especially for younger Americans, is a policy that covers hospitalizations only, with routine care funded through health-savings accounts. Providers are already moving to retail models, rejecting insurance affiliations (especially Medicare) and the red tape that accompanies that kind of business. That model provides pricing signals directly to the consumer, which will stabilize health-care costs much faster and more successfully than government intervention has.

Hospitals and other providers make their “list” prices as high as possible when negotiating contracts with health plans and Medicare regulators. No one is ever expected to pay the list price. Anybody who has seen an “Explanation of Benefits” statement from a health plan will note a very high charge from the provider, and an “adjusted charge” based upon the contracted fee schedule, which usually leaves the patient with little or nothing in out-of-pocket expenses. The only people routinely faced with list prices are those few people who have insurance like my patient’s—that doesn’t include a pre-negotiated fee schedule with contracted providers—or those who have no insurance.

Most people are unaware that if they don’t use insurance, they can negotiate upfront cash prices with hospitals and providers substantially below the “list” price. Doctors are happy to do this. We get paid promptly, without paying office staff to wade through the insurance-payment morass.

So we canceled the surgery and started the scheduling process all over again, this time classifying my patient as a “self-pay” (or uninsured) patient. I quoted him a reasonable upfront cash price, as did the anesthesiologist. We contacted a different hospital and they quoted him a reasonable upfront cash price for the outpatient surgical/nursing services. He underwent his operation the very next day, with a total bill of just a little over $3,000, including doctor and hospital fees. He ended up saving $17,000 by not using insurance.

This process taught us a few things. First, most people these days don’t have health “insurance.” They have prepaid health plans. They pay premiums to take advantage of a pre-negotiated fee schedule arranged for and administered by a third party. My patient, on the other hand, had insurance.

Second, even with the markdown for upfront “cash-pay” patients, none of the providers was losing money on my patient. Otherwise they wouldn’t have agreed to the prices. With the third-party payer taken out of the picture, we got a better idea of the market prices for the services. It is the third-party payment system that interferes with true price competition, so “market clearing prices” can’t develop.

Dr. Singer also uses the same examples of true market-run health care, Lasik and cosmetic surgery, to show how a proper market not only controls costs and prices, but also encourages new providers to enter those markets. Quality and innovation continually improve in those markets, thanks to price transparency and open competition for customers, and providers don’t have to spend a significant amount of their time dealing with insurers or the government instead of their patients.

At some point, we will get to truly rational health-care reform, even if we have to get there by default.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/22/gallup-only-41-approve-of-obamacare/feed/86275962Uh, oh: The Postal Service will only have five days’ worth of cash-on-hand in Octoberhttp://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/14/uh-oh-the-postal-service-only-five-days-worth-of-cash-on-hand-in-october/
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/14/uh-oh-the-postal-service-only-five-days-worth-of-cash-on-hand-in-october/#commentsWed, 14 Aug 2013 22:01:32 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=274753The relevant unions and their progressive Congressional allies have been steadfastly resisting the repeated attempts at substantive reform of the ...

The relevant unions and their progressive Congressional allies have been steadfastly resisting the repeated attempts at substantive reform of the U.S. Postal Service, from both within and without the longstanding institution — never mind that the quasi- agency is has been careening ever-deeper into debt and is approaching a potential insolvency- and/or bailout-scenario with every passing business day. In the latest twist of poor financial news for the quasi-governmental agency is running dangerously low on cash reserves, via WaPo:

The U.S. Postal Service anticipates having only five days of operating cash on hand after making its annual workers’ compensation payment in October, leaving the agency with slim reserves in the event of an unforeseen downturn.

“This is a dangerously low level of cash,” said USPS Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett during a teleconference with reporters on Monday. “We do not have a sufficient cash cushion to run a business the size of the Postal Service.”

USPS spokesman David Partenheimer clarified Tuesday that the agency should be able to survive with a five-day reserve until the first quarter, when revenues for the agency typically begin to increase. “But no business should have to operate that way,” he added.

Oh, my. I suspect there’s some outrage-mongering defense strategery in the near future from some very unhappy unions as the USPS’s financial problems are further realized.

One of the Postal Service’s underlying problems, of course, is that some of their once ubiquitous services are becoming more and more obsolete, and they aren’t too keen on readjusting their workforce. Quasi-governmental and unionized agencies, apparently, are somehow allowed to make those choices not permitted in a freer market — but somewhat encouragingly, the Postal Service has announced that they’re immediately implementing some innovations that they hope will actually step up their game and appeal to consumers on par with their other competitors. Gasp. ABC reports:

The United States Postal Service is improving service to take on package rivals like FedEx, generating an additional $500 million annually, as part of longstanding efforts to stabilize their finances.

Effective immediately the mail carrier will be offering free online tracking and free insurance for their Priority Mail shipping, matching the standard services of UPS and FedEx. Priority Mail parcels will be offered a standard $50 insurance, which can be upgraded on request. The USPS will also tell customers the exact day on which to expect a package — up to three days from ship. Previously the carrier would only offer a range of dates.

It will not affect pricing for package delivery, which remains unchanged. The changes also include cosmetic tweaks to its shipping containers and folds the premium Express Mail offering into Priority Mail.

Postal Service officials are calling this “refresh” of their product line one of their most important changes in three decades and expect it to yield an additional $500 million in revenue annually for the troubled agency. Today’s announcement comes two days after the carrier admitted it had suffered $3.9 billion in year-to-date losses by the end of the third quarter and would hold just five days worth of cash on hand in October.

It’s not a solution, but it’s a step in the right direction for revamping their broken business model.

Just what the national debt needs: Another “temporary” reprieve on an expensive federal program that actively promotes adverse incentives and undercuts a service available in the free market, all at the expense of the faceless taxpayer. Perfect.

The AP reports that hundreds of thousands of homeowners were, until yesterday, looking at higher premiums on their federally subsidized flood insurance after Congress passed (the minimum of) much-needed reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program. On Tuesday, however, the possibility of a one-year reprieve on the higher premiums started to make its way through the Senate:

The temporary relief would go to homeowners in low-lying areas of Louisiana, Florida and other states where new government surveys could produce flood insurance premium in­creases so big that the homeowners might be no longer able to afford their homes.

At issue are homeowners whose flood insurance bills have historically been “grandfathered” at lower rates since they followed the rules in place at the time they bought or built their home. Under last year’s bipartisan overhaul, many of these homeowners face higher premiums when new flood maps are issued.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the measure as part of a $39 billion spending bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. The legislation has already passed the House as part of its version of the spending bill.

The overhaul of the flood insurance program passed last year with sweeping bipartisan support. The program has required more than $24 billion in bailouts since being established in 1968, with billions of dollars in additional costs from Hurricane Sandy still being tallied. Most of the losses came because of subsidized insurance rates and losses from repeat claims on homes and businesses flooded every few years.

Why is it that whenever Congress seems to finally summon the gumption to allow the tiniest bit of government spending to fall away, it seems like they almost immediately move to temper it? Starting this October, insurance rates on homes and businesses in flood zones that have been repeatedly and severely flooded are going to start going up by 25 percent a year until they reflected the “true risk” of the area, while subsidized rates would begin to lapse when homes were sold or flooded repeatedly. The reforms were passed on a bipartisan basis, and reflected the simple reality that, if you cannot afford the risk of rebuilding or repairing your home that comes with living in a flood zone, maybe… don’t live in a flood zone. The costs of maintaining waterfront property aren’t always cheap, for more than one reason — and they shouldn’t be made cheap by the largesse of the federal government.

Older homes under older codes were also supposed to start seeing rate increases starting late next year, but now Congress might be putting a delay on that category — and perhaps another one-year delay isn’t a big deal, except what’s to stop them from doing the exact same thing next year? This hardly qualifies as a service that necessitates the involvement of the federal government, and it is one that we can ill afford.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/17/oh-good-congress-moving-on-a-reprieve-for-already-subsidized-federal-flood-insurance/feed/30270318Uh oh: Solar panels are having more quality-control problems, and we just installed a whole bunchhttp://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/01/uh-oh-solar-panels-are-having-more-quality-control-problems-and-we-just-installed-a-whole-bunch/
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/01/uh-oh-solar-panels-are-having-more-quality-control-problems-and-we-just-installed-a-whole-bunch/#commentsSat, 01 Jun 2013 21:31:55 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=263290Who could've seen this coming?

President Obama has many times insisted that we need to relentlessly continue making the renewable-energy “investments” that will help the United States create “green jobs” and give us a competitive edge against countries like China and help us “win the future” — but whatever miraculous future he’s referring to is unclear, since China’s policies are so often an example of precisely what not to do. China’s solar-panel industry is a hot mess of overcapacity right now, with too many firms and way too many panels thanks to their many wildly generous subsidy programs.

The resulting flood of solar panels on the global market means plummeting prices, which in turns means that solar panel companies are losing money and are looking for ways to pinch their pennies. Hence, even some of the biggest solar companies in the world are using cheaper, even untested substitute materials in their manufacturing, causing an emerging and alarming problem of quality control, via the NYT:

The solar panels covering a vast warehouse roof in the sun-soaked Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles were only two years into their expected 25-year life span when they began to fail.

Coatings that protect the panels disintegrated while other defects caused two fires that took the system offline for two years, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenues.

It was not an isolated incident. Worldwide, testing labs, developers, financiers and insurers are reporting similar problems and say the $77 billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels are on the verge of widespread adoption. …

The quality concerns have emerged just after a surge in solar construction. In the United States, the Solar Energy Industries Association said that solar panel generating capacity exploded from 83 megawatts in 2003 to 7,266 megawatts in 2012, enough to power more than 1.2 million homes. Nearly half that capacity was installed in 2012 alone, meaning any significant problems may not become apparent for years. …

Read: The Obama administration and states like California have just spent a bunch of taxpayer money on incentivizing people to build solar installations, and now it sounds like a lot of these solar panels are of ruinously questionable quality. Great.

As I’ve said many times before, I have zero problems with the idea of solar energy in and of itself. The only problem here is governments that relentlessly subsidize the bejeesus out of their politically-favored pet projects, recklessly “investing” with money that isn’t theirs so they can win votes by pointing to all of the vague ways in which they’re “doing something” about climate change.

It isn’t because solar might not have a legitimate, affordable, and helpful place in our energy scheme — but as long as we keep throwing artificial top-down faux-market signals into the mix, we’ll never really be able to know. All of this subsidizing and cashing out and cronyism is nothing short of an egregious disservice to the renewable energy industries that eco-radicals claim to love so much, because in the long run it discourages price efficiency and competitiveness. If green progressives want these fledgling technologies to succeed, they need to push them out of the nest and see if they can fly on their own.

If you don’t succeed with a frontal attack, try a flanking maneuver. That seems to be the theory of the World Health Organization (WHO), anyway. Having not made a lot of ground on their efforts to institute an international tax on cigarettes, it appears that their next strategy will be to get everyone to forbid the tobacco industry from advertising. Anywhere. Even on their own product packaging.

WHO calls for total ban on tobacco advertising

MANILA, May 30 (Xinhua) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a comprehensive ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, saying that the tobacco companies’ ” aggressive marketing” has led to addiction killing at least 6 million people worldwide each year.

In a statement issued Thursday, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Dr. Shin Young-soo cited the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as saying governments around the world “must comprehensively ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.”

As the title of this column indicates, this effort has apparently already found some sympathetic ears across the pond. Ireland – an otherwise frequently sensible nation – seems ready to squat down on the free market kick some butts. (pun intended)

All trademarks, logos, colours and graphics will be removed from tobacco products sold in Ireland under the new rules, the health ministry said, after the proposal secured backing from the government.

Dr James Reilly, the country’s health minister, said while many arguments will be made against the move, he is confident the legislation will be justified and supported purely by the fact that it will save lives.

All we need is a few more people like the Deplorable Nanny State Mayor here in the United States, and you too can enjoy the benefits of these policies. But you’ll notice one thing they have in common. They’re still not trying to outlaw the products or say that adults can’t buy them. They’re just taking off the labeling and stopping them from promoting their products anywhere. None of this makes a pack of smokes less available, but simply stops the various manufacturers from competing effectively against each other in the same market space.

This “feel good” style of legislation obviously gives nanny state activists reason to cheer, pat themselves on the back and justify all the money they raise and spend, but it has no substantive effect beyond that. And what of the companies who are marketing products with lower levels of tar and other problematic components to reduce health risks? Might you not want them to have a fair shot at promoting their alternative products? Apparently not. But then again, that’s not what this has been about all along.

Meanwhile, in other nanny state smoking news, Minnesota already passed a new cigarette tax, with California and Massachusetts considering the same. That should really boost their revenue, eh? As we’ve tried to tell them here over and over, not so much.

Pew States: Cigarette Smuggling Cuts States’ Per-Pack Tax Revenues

In 2010, states with high tobacco taxes lost about $5 billion in revenue because of cigarette smuggling, according to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. Experts say the number is climbing.

Most of the black market in cigarettes is between low-tax states and high-tax states: Smugglers purchase cigarettes in a low-tax state and transport them to a high-tax state. Then they sell them at a discount to smokers while still pocketing a healthy profit. Because there is such a wide disparity among states’ cigarette taxes, the price differential is well worth the risk of smuggling, according to law enforcement officials.

But hey… don’t listen to us. You just keep right on plucking that chicken, folks.

While we wait, let’s chew on some of the other claims of IRS bias out there. I’m leery of touting any single group’s allegations but the Thomas More Society has looked at the following and evidently thinks there’s enough evidence to justify taking on the Coalition for Life of Iowa as a client. No one’s alleging an agency-wide pro-choice policy, but this may well illustrate the tremendous power individual IRS agents have to quietly discourage political activity of which they disapprove. The news about tea-party groups being targeted gets headlines because it’s about systematic bias, but how often does the particular bias of an, ahem, “rogue” employee cause delays or denials for disfavored orgs?

In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent “Ms. Richards” told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved. After a series of letters following a request for more invasive information, Thomas More Society special counsel Sally Wagenmaker sent a letter to the IRS demanding the tax exempt status be issued immediately…

In another similar case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with “40 Days for Life” and “Life Chain” events. The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.

Two cases doesn’t prove a “policy” but it’s a start. More on this, please. Meanwhile, here’s a pro tip from a former Republican National Committee staffer: If you change the name of your organization to something that sounds more liberal, it might just speed up your approval time. Go figure:

He submitted the paperwork to the IRS in July 2011 for a news site called Media Trackers, which calls itself a “non-partisan investigative watchdog dedicated to promoting accountability in the media and government.” Although the site has investigated Republicans like Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the site’s organizers are unapologetically conservative…

When September 2012 arrived with still no word from the IRS, Ryun determined that Media Trackers would likely never obtain standalone non-profit status, and he tried a new approach: Starting over. He applied for permanent non-profit status for a separate group called Greenhouse Solutions, a pre-existing organization that was reaching the end of its determination period.

The IRS approved Greenhouse Solutions’ request for non-profit status in three weeks…

In December 2012, Ryun simply made Media Trackers a project of Greenhouse Solutions and withdrew the Media Trackers application.

If you’re planning to apply for 501(c)(4) status for your own group, replace “tea party” or “patriot” with “occupy” and see how you do. It might spare you from having to submit the names of children your group is trying to help. Good lord.

Update:Tim Carney looks at the donations records for IRS employees in Cincinnati and finds a lesson about big government. Whether or not the White House was handing down directives, when federal power is as broad as it is now, partisan abuse by cogs in the state’s machinery is inevitable. Smoking gun?

In the past three election cycles, the Center for Responsive Politics’ database shows about $474,000 in political donations by individuals listing “IRS” or “Internal Revenue Service” as their employer.

This money heavily favors Democrats: $247,000 to $145,000, with the rest going to political action committees. (Oddly, half of those GOP donations come from only two IRS employees, one in Houston and one in Annandale, Va.)

IRS employees also gave $67,000 to the PAC of the National Treasury Employees Union, which in turn gave more than 96 percent of its contributions to Democrats. Add the PAC cash to the individual donations and IRS employees favor Democrats 2-to-1.

The Cincinnati office where the political targeting took place is much more partisan, judging by FEC filings. More than 75 percent of the campaign contributions from that office in the past three elections went to Democrats. In 2012, every donation traceable to employees at that office went to either President Obama or liberal Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

As someone noted on Twitter in response to Carney’s post, if you’ve made your career working in government — especially at the IRS — you have a heavy political interest in protecting the party of big government.

Update: The first head rolls: O announces that Steve Miller, acting commissioner of the IRS and a man who’s known for a year about the agency’s targeting of conservatives, is out. Worth noting, though: Miller wasn’t commissioner when most of the targeting occurred. That was Doug Shulman, who left in November.

‘Lew took the first step by requesting and accepting the resignation of the acting director of the IRS,’ Obama said.

‘It’s important,’ he added, ‘to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward.’

But in an email to IRS employees, Miller claimed he would only be leaving next month because his assignment would be over.

‘It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June,’ Miller wrote. ‘This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.’

Wages are down. Jobs are stagnant. The economy hasn’t generated the kind of growth that should fuel consumer spending. Yet we are seeing consumer confidence and spending numbers that belie the normal metrics that measure economic health. According to US News’ Rick Newman, economists suspect that an underground economy has begun to bypass the normal channels of commerce:

Something fishy is going on in consumers’ wallets.

Household spending has held up surprisingly well in recent months, even though new taxes have reduced paychecks and other problems are holding back the economy. Incomes haven’t risen by nearly enough to explain the entire boost in spending. Nor has the use of credit cards.

When your teenager starts wearing expensive clothes and flashing bling he couldn’t possibly afford through his part-time job, you start to wonder where the money is coming from. Some economists are asking the same question about consumers who seem more flush than they ought to be. The answer may lie in the large “underground” economy that doesn’t show up in official statistics.

There are always some businesses and individuals operating on a cash basis to dodge taxes, evade regulations or conceal illegal activity. Economists now speculate that the underground economy may have swelled during the last few years, given all the people who can’t find full-time work at decent pay.

“Severe recessions have historically driven jobless Americans into the shadow economy,” writes Bernard Baumohl of the Economic Outlook Group. “We suspect the destructive nature of the last downturn and the prolonged weak recovery pushed a record number of people into that murky world of cash transactions.”

First, it should be noted that a “black market economy” is not a healthy sign, even if it provides an alternative boost to a stalled overall economy. It’s not safe for any of its participants, for while it avoids irrational regulation, it also avoids rational regulation as well. The cash economy might make it easier for some of the chronically unemployed to find ways to make ends meet, it represents no investment in either direction in future health and growth of the markets involved. Further, it’s not healthy for the government that creates or amplifies such a market, if for no other reason than it cannot extract rational revenues from its participants, putting more of a burden on legal commerce.

If this is indeed the reality of the current American economy, we should ask ourselves how we arrived at this situation. Because of everything I described in the preceding paragraph, it’s usually more risky than lucrative to engage in underground commerce, and often more costly in various ways. Only when government expands regulation (and especially irrational regulation) enough does that imbalance tip toward taking the riskier route. We have spent the past five years since the financial crisis making regular hiring more expensive via ObamaCare especially, but also through Dodd-Frank, too.

Thanks to these new costs, the value of the regular hire has declined dramatically. It’s not terribly surprising, then, that we’re seeing less of that kind of employment. Our labor-force participation rate has dropped to 63.5%, a 34-year low, and those who have been out of work the longest have the least value now in the above-ground labor market. It costs too much now for companies to create open positions that carry the costs of mandated health insurance. Instead, more employers appear to be paying cash for what used to be called piece work in a bygone era.

As long as this remains the case, the regular economy will never right itself, and we will lose the opportunity for positive investment and long-term economic health until we correct these issues.

There have been reports that the bipartisan group of senators working on an immigration plan have reached an agreement on a pathway to legal status to the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants, but Republicans dodged the issue earlier this week, insisting that there’s still plenty of work to be done before they’re ready to roll the thing out — and Sen. Rubio probably knew that CPAC wasn’t the time or place to get into it. Conspicuously avoiding the immigration topic (even steering clear of the story of his parents’ immigration from Cuba), he went for a more crowd-pleasing conservative smorgasbord instead.

Not that that was a bad thing — getting the obligatory water-bottle joke out of the way early, he went straight for the free enterprise, constitutional principles, the importance of family, and American greatness. I tend to think that one of Rubio’s greatest strengths lies in effectively countering President Obama and the Democrat’s Republican-demonization strategery, and he didn’t disappoint on that front, touting free markets as the most effective method of lifting people out of poverty and chiding the Obama administration that our obligations to our fellow men are not better served by government fiat and $16 trillion debts.